Best Burger St. Louis 2011 - Five Bistro

When word got out late last year that Newstead Tower Public House would close, it sent a chill down the spines of burger lovers throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area. Newstead had opened only three years prior, but in that short time its burger had leapt to the pinnacle of the local ground-beef-on-a-bun pyramid. (This paper dubbed it "Best Burger" in 2008 and 2010.) No worries: Anthony Devoti relocated the Newstead burger to the menu at his other establishment, Five Bistro, and it remains the champion. The meat is grass-fed chuck (ground in-house) from Rain Crow Ranch in the beef-producing powerhouse of Doniphan in southern Missouri. The basic burger consists of that beef, plus tomato and housemade pickles. And that's doubtless the way the good Lord intended a burger to be. But, hey, like your mom always told you, there's no harm in dressing up every now and then. And at Five you can pay a little extra to top your burger with the cheese of your choice, or caramelized onions, or a fried egg, or pickled shiitake mushrooms, or smoked pork jowl, or bacon with tomato and a balsamic jam. (We're partial to the egg.) Now, the burger is available Thursday through Saturday, but only for lunch and from 10 p.m. to midnight. should this fact slip your mind and you find yourself at Five Bistro during the dinner service, by all means calm down. If Devoti lavishes that much attention on this burger, imagine what he puts into Five's dinner entrées!